


You may get hurt In a thousand ways (But give it one more try)

by Mozzarella



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: 1930s, A LOT of racism basically both obvious and subtle, A lot of non-PC terminology too because again history, Black Harlem, Derogatory Language, Jazz - Freeform, Jazz Music, M/M, New York City, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Racism, Sam's grandparents whose names I made up huhu, Slurs, World War II, harlem renaissance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 15:27:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8406952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mozzarella/pseuds/Mozzarella
Summary: In which:Bucky Barnes spent his nights in the dance halls of Black Harlem and took the music with him into war and beyond. Also:Bucky and Sam play the worst tourists New York City has ever seen on his road to recovery





	

**Author's Note:**

> Art by dreammaiden on LJ, masterpost here: http://dreammaidenn.livejournal.com/14308.html
> 
> OK FIRST OF ALL, LET ME GET THIS OUT OF THE WAY: I'm not black, or from Harlem, so what I write here is automatically from an outsider's perspective and to a point, racist. That said, I got pulled into the culture of Harlem in the 30s, the Harlem Renaissance, and wanted to write about it, so I did. 
> 
> List of racist things to watch out for:  
> -non Harlem person writing about Harlem  
> -non black person writing about black culture  
> -racist slang  
> -Bucky's general interest in black men from Harlem  
> -period typical racist attitudes  
> -(attempt at) police brutality (off-screen)
> 
> No footnotes for slang terms, but I drew from these sources for the jive talk: 
> 
> mostly this: http://aalbc.com/authors/harlemslang.htm  
> and a little bit of this: http://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/slang.html
> 
> This was mostly me just dropping tidbits I learned in my trip into Black Harlem culture and having these two morons fall in love to dance and jazz, so... enjoy!

 

[ ](http://dreammaidenn.livejournal.com/14308.html)

 

 

One of the things Bucky missed most on the front was the music. It wasn't the kind you could get on the clunky radios they could manage to get working in the camps, not the kind that crooned sweet lovin' and lovers coming home for their ladies.

 

It was the drum beat, the swell of a horn, the lively strum and spin that was just as much a performance for the eyes as it was for the ears and the heart.

 

It was a wink and a kiss in the shadows, a room in the back that'd take you all the way up to heaven even when most of 'polite' society insisted that was the way to hell—in the arms of _Zigaboo devils_ who tempted, _good, decent_ white folk with their jazz and their blues and their _immorality._

 

But Bucky didn't pay much attention to those Peckerwoods who couldn't tell God from a sack of potatoes, not when he could get on his knees for one of Aunt Hagar's boys and get a smile out of him, brighter than any smile he could get from boys or girls most people expected him to hang around.

 

He liked the way the clubs were loud, vibrant, full of the energies that both invigorated and tired one out after a long, hard day's work, and he liked the way the speakeasies were quiet, the sweet saxophone drifting across the hall like a caress.

 

He liked that he'd made enough of a name for himself that they got to calling him the 'Charlie with the coif', got boys and girls running a hand through his hair and watching him slide it back into place, giggling from the bathtub gin they poured into fancy bottles.

 

Even with the prohibition finding its end early in the decade, the beauty of Harlem and its quiet traps for good music and good drink had a good many years in 'em before they puttered out.

 

“ _Dere's dat Charlie with the coif, dere's that Bucky, he'll always be down for dat thing if you ask. He likes his boys, but he charms dem coal-scuttle blonds just as easy, he'll buy you a drink if you good.”_

 

The jive talk was just like the music—made him feel like he was right at home, and not hearing it on the front was just that much more of a sting, surrounded by gray and sickly green and brown where there used to be so much color, though color wasn't much of an improvement when the vivid red of blood in a battlefield was what he got.

 

Most days, he closed his eyes, thought of Stevie, thought of how the punk used to get him outta trouble with his folks by letting him into his apartment at the wee hours of the morning, when he came back from a night on the town with a gorgeous eight rock in a zoot suit, grimacing at his half drunk state and letting him have the couch out then telling his parents he'd been with him all night, might have gotten a bit enthusiastic with their whiskey stores, but nowhere out where it was dangerous.

 

He wondered what his parents would have done if they'd known.

 

* * *

 

 

Thing was, people thought it was Bucky taking it on the chin whenever he helped Steve out of trouble, but half the time Steve was the one who kept him on track. He was no saint, and Steve was too scrappy to be an angel, but they were good guys and they survived well enough, even when times got tough and Steve was alone.

 

Steve, he didn't judge nobody but the bullies he got into scraps with. If wars were won by spirit alone, you'd only need a couple of him to make the Nazis drop their guns and beg for mercy. Unfortunately, Steve's body didn't match the fire that made up his soul, and Bucky felt his throat fall past his stomach into some alarming pit he couldn't venture the depth of when he was drafted.

 

He brought some girls out for a night on the town in the final days leading up to his departure, but soon as he got them home by ten, he and Steve—who never did come out with him to his little adventures—made their way into the energetic jiving dance halls to say their goodbyes to the boys who were still around before they too got sent off, and the girls who'd miss them.

 

Steve was smiling when he got some kisses from the sweet fairies who'd given him his silly nickname, blushing when he got pulled into one himself, but Bucky knew he never had any problem with fairies nor coloured folks, so he chalked it up to the same embarrassment that made Steve reluctant to go out with the girls Bucky brought along.

 

They sat together nursing drinks in the quiet, while couples slow danced to the gentle croon of the large, broad-shouldered lady-dresser in a sparkling number and red rouge on his lips, swaying back and forth to the blues of the lone sax player sitting at the foot of the stage.

 

Mama Ellie, whose sweet voice helped him sleep well beyond the clubs, gave him a kiss on the cheek and bade him good luck. “Come back to us, baby boy. You're one of the good ones,” she'd said, and Bucky cried one night in the trenches thinking about her as much as his own parents, when the only music he had was the distant wails of men in the medical tent, suffering in their cots. He wanted to go home, and that was all he could think to himself, grown man that he was.

 

It got easier when Steve came, but right before that, it got a hell of a lot harder than he'd ever thought it would.

 

* * *

 

 

There was a scuffle in the camps when some of Bucky's own fellow soldiers started heckling the boys from the 92 nd  Infantry, All Black and All Proud, and before any of their superiors could come over to stop the harassment (not that any of them seemed to be in much of a hurry), Bucky walked right up to the loudest man (Coswell, his name was, one of the friendlier ones who Bucky had liked at the start) and socked him right in the jaw.

 

“What in the hell—you a nigger lover, Barnes? That it?” Coswell had yelled. Bucky gave him a grin that was more a snarl than anything while everybody milled around, watching the proceedings in open fascination.

 

“How about you, Cos? You a Nazi?” Bucky said loudly. “You sure sound like one, what with all that bullshit you're spouting at our brothers in arms over here. All that Nazi talk 'bout superior races, you sure you're fighting on the right side?”

 

Coswell threw a mean punch, and while it didn't hit hard when Bucky tipped back over, he was caught by two pairs of steady arms that pushed him right back up, and he was greeted by the nods and musing grins of some of the 92nd's boys. He gave a little wink right as Coswell charged again, and hit the man hard enough to have him sprawling in the dirt, not getting up again.

 

If it weren't for Agent Carter, for whom Bucky had the utmost respect since she punched out a recruit who was back sassing her and then got everybody in line on her order, the finest of drill sergeants, he knew he'd have gotten into much more trouble than he was in already.

 

Fortunately, she was of the same mind as him, positively fuming at Coswell and his cronies, and sent them off to do a hard day's work where trenches needed to be dug, while Bucky got relegated to potato peeling and cleaning the pans for dinner. Colonel Phillips didn't say a word against the example Peggy was making, and Bucky's work got cut down when Gabe Jones, one of the 92 nd , sat down with him to help make a dent in the great wall of potatoes.

 

He learned the man could speak French and German, and learned a couple of words and phrases that Gabe assured him would win him all the ladies, though he guessed it'd win him more smacks in the face than smiles.

 

He said nothing of his inclinations either, how he'd like to learn how to charm some French gentleman (the French, he'd heard, were a passionate people, and he wanted to verify that, as thoroughly as possible), though he felt comfortable enough that he wished he could.

 

Not for the first time, he wished Steve were around. With Steve, he never had to pretend anything, never had to hide.

 

He dreamed of when he could be wholly himself. Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, soldier, Bucky, best friend to the greatest spitfire punk in all of Brooklyn and the world and loving son, and Charlie with the coif, who could jive almost as well as any Harlem boy.

 

That was a time he didn't think he'd live to see. But it was a good dream, nonetheless.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

 

He didn't think he'd ever seen a man as gorgeous as Sam Wilson. It was an absent thought, the niggling voice of the old Bucky Barnes knocking around in his head, as he dodged the man in various cities as he followed the right trail but remained firmly a step behind.

 

Bucky—the soldier, trying to feel as though he were Bucky again, even if he believed it a lost cause—left him a trail fresh enough that only Wilson could find him. If he trusted the man could dispose of it as needed, nobody, not even Steve ( _little Stevey, not so little now—too big, too strong, eyes too broken, so unlike the little_ _**punk** _ _with too little a frame for the fire in his eyes),_ had to know but Wilson.

 

Sometimes he took to observing the man through the scope of a rifle, renting a room from an apartment block across, one with thick, peeling white concrete and tiny windows (Wilson under an assumed name, doing everything conceivable that authorities couldn't track his whereabouts, but not enough that somebody as trained as the soldier couldn't make him easily).

 

After too long chasing the wind and without the means to keep playing the game the soldier had set up for him, Sam Wilson was forced to abandon his search. The last Bucky (the soldier, still, but with a spark that he thought might have felt like _Bucky_ ) saw of him before he headed back to the states was him doing a last sweep of the quiet town, trying for mundane as he fed the birds in the park (though he genuinely did seem to enjoy the company), smiling wide as they fought over their meal in petty jabs and pecks.

 

His smile made Bucky's heart stutter ( _Bucky,_ not the soldier, not this time). Urged along like a dance to a long-lost tune, Bucky, with all the quick cunning and silent speed of the soldier, snuck into Sam Wilson's room an hour ahead, leaving a feather nestled visibly on the white sheets in the very center of the made-up bed.

 

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Come on, man. There's gotta be something you miss enough to stay awake for. Stark's on our side now, and mini-S.H.I.E.L.D.'s got that face-altering software Tasha used back when we were taking Pierce down. You could go back home, back to Brooklyn or wherever you wanna see. Or you could just see the world, maybe go back to a country you didn't get to enjoy back in the war. Maybe there's something you wanna do that you haven't done in a while. Go out for a drink, maybe a li'l bit of dancing—”

 

Bucky (even if half the time his brain was a dull buzz and a mess of scattered memories he needed to pick up whenever Steve asked it of him, he was sure, at least, that he _felt_ like Bucky, even if just a little) twitched a little where he sat, and Wilson— _Sam, he said to call him Sam_ —smirked, knowing he had his number. He shifted on the couch beside Bucky, one arm across the back and one leg folded over the cushions, half facing the other man.

 

“Steve said you liked dancing,” Sam said. “Though I dunno if you'll like the scene today. Definitely different from the 1930s. I'd make a joke about boring old people dances but I've watched enough pre-code films to know which era had the superior moves, even the white folks. You guys sure knew how to swing back then. Grams and Gramps keep talking about how there hadn't been any real good dancing since the jive, but—”

 

“It's true,” Bucky cut in abruptly, the thin line of his lips curving just the slightest bit, barely perceptible but for the way his posture relaxed ever so slightly. “The jive was like the swing, but... better. More energetic. I was always good at the swing but the jive was a real challenge and I loved going to the dance halls to practice it with whoever was willing to teach a Charlie how to do ne—ah, black dance moves.”

 

Sam looked at him, bemused.

 

“Were you really just about to say what I think you were about to say?” he said, his mouth threatening to widen in either a grin or a grimace.

 

Bucky ran a hand through his hair nervously. “You know, back then... it was the other way 'round. It wasn't... proper to say 'black', that was the insult, the big bad word you couldn't use. The accepted term was... well, the other one, and saying 'black' was a big no to anybody who cared the littlest bit about how Aunt Hagar's kids felt.”

 

“Yeah, I get that,” Sam said, relaxing his own posture as the shape of his mouth curved soft instead of sharp. “Had something to do with reclaiming the word, I think. It happens, people take something that was used against them and uses it to empower themselves.”

 

Bucky nodded, slowly. The stump of his missing arm twitched, but he wasn't so tense as before, when he was first learning to move without it, and T'Challa and his team of scientists had closed it up nicely, covering up the exposed parts and making him feel that much more comfortable.

 

“You're a walking history lesson, man. Kinda like Steve, but I never got the impression he knew much about, well. Didn't sound like he knew a brother more than Gabe Jones, and Jones wasn't even from New York.”

 

“I... knew more than Steve about...”

 

“Jive talk and the Harlem scene?” Sam suggested in a tone that sounded half joking, but his eyes widened and his mouth fell slightly open when Bucky nodded seriously, looking as though he was expecting Sam to ask him about it.

 

“Didn't figure you for the type. Not that that says much—what I've seen of you tells me a lot less about the Bucky Barnes of the thirties and forties than Steve's stories. So what, you were around for the Harlem Renaissance? I mean, not around around, but like, did you see it?”

 

“I lived it,” Bucky said, “even as an outsider the whole time I was in it.” He raised a questioning eyebrow at Sam. “I thought you lived in D.C.”

 

“Harlem-born and raised, bud. My grandparents still live there, and you won't find any couple proud as they were to live through that point in history.”

 

Bucky smiled even wider, a little strained, the kinks in his jaw straightening out from lack of use. “The dance halls and jazz clubs in Harlem were the best in the city. I always went over there after working at the docks. Steve covered for me, told my parents I was staying over at his place. Truth was, I was out dancing till late with some Russian I met at a shine box, togged to the bricks when I could spare it.”

 

“Whoa, hey there, slow down,” Sam said, shaking his head, shoulders shaking like he was trying to suppress laughter, the side of his mouth twitching to confirm it. “I actually have no idea what you're saying right now. Is that, what is that? Slang from the 30s?”

 

“Jive talk, yeah,” Bucky said, grinning now. “Your grandparents would know what I'm saying.”

 

“Well I'm not ancient like you, Buck. Mind letting me in on that old timey jargon? Not even Steve talked like that, even when he drops his “dames” and “says yous” sometimes.”

 

Bucky leaned back, looking up the ceiling in thought before replying, “I was dancing till late with a—well, a man from the south, a southern, uh, black man, we called 'em Russians. _Rushing up_ since the South was a crap hole for them at the time.”

 

Sam's eyes were wide, but he nodded, gesturing for him to continue.

 

“Shine boxes were, Uh, establishments run by black people, for black people, and other, ah, coloured folks, and whites who weren't the kind to make a fuss. Usually immigrants, the kind that got the shaft for not being able to speak English perfectly, or for being pale Irish or Jews or the like. A lot of gangsters, they funded the places and kept them _protected_ since a lot of bad folk still wanted to do some damage but couldn't if that meant they'd be sleeping with the fishes in the end.”

 

“Okay. How about the last bit?”

 

“Togged to the bricks? Meant I was wearing my best suit. Needed to make a good impression if I wanted the night to go where I wanted it.”

 

“So you were out—wait, wait. Out dancing with a guy down in Harlem, in your best suit, so you could get lucky?”

 

“Well,” Bucky said, unable to keep the smirk off his face, “We didn't exactly do much dancing.”

 

Sam burst out laughing, which made Bucky falter for just a moment, before a solid thump landed on his back and Sam kept his hand there, warm against the fabric, as he said, “The history books did not do you _any justice,_ man. Bucky Barnes, party boy, a man's man in the 30s and 40s who liked the Harlem scene? I would have _loved_ reading about that, growing up. And Steve knew about this?”

 

"He didn't have nothin' against the coloured folks down in Harlem, and a lot of the pansies up in St. George's loved the punk, he was a real gentleman, calling 'em Ma'am and Missus and Miss. One of 'em gave him art lessons to help him when he was gonna apply for school. Steve knew where I'd been going since I started going there, and it took me a while to tell him exactly what I was up to, and all he told me, no judgment whatsoever, was to tell my parents I was with him if they ever asked."

 

Sam's grin grew wider, but there was a softness to it that Bucky could understand, where Steve was involved. "He was a real bro even back then I guess. You know, if we got it out that Captain America's bestie from the forties was a queer kid who liked black guys we'd give all of the Republican Party an aneurysm. Hell, telling them Steve liked hanging with the community should do it."

 

Bucky's grip tightened on the couch's plush arm involuntarily, an effect of the long since forgotten fear of being discovered, even if, by now, his exploits were the last thing in a long list of sins he felt shame for, if they were there at all.

 

He was startled out of his musings when the TV remote hit him in the shoulder. He glared at Sam, who was giving him a little smirk that hid something behind his eyes. "Hey, wanna find some History Channel documentaries about New York in the thirties and forties and complain about which bits they got wrong?"

 

Bucky raised an eyebrow and scrunched his nose up in confusion and a little disdain, but begrudgingly switched the Smart TV (the one Sam called the "Smarter TV" as he lamented ever having to go back to "inferior American TV" after getting to use the more advanced and convenient Wakandan version) on.

 

Somehow, somehow they spent the afternoon laughing until their sides burned about a joke that wasn't even that funny, and T'challa didn't mention it when Bucky postponed his trip back under for another night.

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was exactly three months later that Bucky first awoke, and it was to T'challa standing in front of his tank, looking grim but determined. It didn't take long for him to register the first word, and then the next.

 

By the last, he had cut bloody seams the size of his nails into his palms and had bitten off a bud of skin from the tip of his tongue, but he opened his eyes and still saw T'challa standing there as before, and he realized he had not lost time.

 

"It is not an ideal solution," said T'challa when Bucky was released from the pod. "The words trigger stress and pain receptors in your brain but not the state which HYDRA found useful as a tool. A more painless solution would have been ideal, but this is not the first time we've woken you and those methods were... markedly less effective."

 

He didn't say that it was more than he'd ever hoped. He couldn't say he didn't prefer the pain to T'challa finding a perfect solution. It seemed only right for what the words made him do, that the pain of others could be transformed into his own.

 

He couldn't say a word of what he was thinking, of how he felt, the words pattering into silence in his mind like the snare at the end of a song.

 

All he _could_ say, with all the sincerity he could voice, was thank you.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve was on a mission, had been for a while, and it took a few days of terse silences and Sam's lack of joviality for Bucky to learn that they'd gotten into a fight. He'd sat there in Sam's uncharacteristic silence, the sound of the television and the off-beat rhythm of Wakanda's wildlife the only thing filling the empty spaces Sam used to fill with even the most inane chatter, the kind that made Bucky's lips twitch half in amusement and half in confusion.

 

One day, Bucky took the remote without so much as a twitch from Sam and surfed channels until he landed on nothing but a menu, gone past cable and into radio territory. Without a word from him or Sam, he searched a name he hoped survived the decades for how legendary his music was, and wasn't disappointed. Sam quirked a little smile when the best of Duke Ellington filled the room (which was by no means little), It Don't Mean a Thing and the wail of its trumpets chasing away the brooding atmosphere that, for once, Bucky hadn't been contributing to.

 

"Classic," Sam said in a chuckle.

 

 _"Classy,"_ Bucky corrected, emphasizing the 'y'. "Duke Ellington was the classiest. Harlem royalty, up down and sideways. In his toes, all through the magic fingers. Nobody had the chops he did when it came to the ivory keys. They don't make 'em like him anymore."

 

"How would you know, icy pop? 70 years is a lot of good music you missed out on. Did you at least catch up on Michael Jackson when you were hiding out?" Sam challenged, not unkindly, as Bucky got up with the chorus.

 

"O'course. Music royalty, I get. King of Pop, sure. But the Duke, he was—how do I describe it, he was what'd happen if you bottled up class. Pure, undiluted."

 

"You ever get to watch him live?" Sam asked, intrigued as the tracks switched, the syrupy voice of a few vocalists following after a lively intro, Take the A Train playing cheery background to their conversation.

 

"You kidding? You had to've been one of the real high rollers to get in the Cotton Club. S'where you had all the big name white folks in captive audience to the biggest names in music. Black musicians, black dancers, the best of the best."

 

Sam gave a little nod and a wave of his hand, looking something like a benevolent lord granting a servant favor or mercy, even as he said "Yeah, I heard of the Cotton Club man, I know my history," with what Bucky thought was an appropriate amount of disdain for a whites-only club with primarily black performers playacting slaves in some cotton plantation in the hostile south.

 

"S'where the Duke played nights. You couldn't get in to watch unless you had a full purse and the right skin tone, and I had one but never the other. I heard him once, though. Some sweet thing that played in his band—clarinet, I think—snuck me in the back once during their rehearsals to listen. Couldn't ever forget it."

 

Sam mouthed 'sweet thing' in amusement, closing his eyes and taking in the smooth "doobeedoo" scat lines and Bucky stood, stretching the littlest bit before his feet began to move, horns and trumpets setting the pace as he did a bit of a Charleston across the polished floor, the movement enough to lift Sam's head.

 

"Man, what're you doing?" Sam said, smiling incredulously as Bucky picked up the pace, his body remembering even after so long, remembering better than his mind ever could, kicking it up in half a Lindy Hop without a partner on his arm, mouthing the words that he heard the first time around, _"You'll find you've missed the quickest way to Harlem."_

 

He had to make up for the lack of weight where he no longer had an arm to swing or a hand to snap on one side, but it was almost like he was back in a dance hall, or in a back alley with Steve tapping out and humming him a rhythm to practice to.

 

If he weren't so well-trained, Bucky would have startled at the way Sam stood up, sudden and almost violent, knocking his knee against the table but halting so abruptly he barely even seemed to notice. He had a pinched look of determination setting his brow and jaw, and he turned to Bucky, who kept his gaze even while tapping his feet as the other man said, "Let's go to Harlem."

 

Bucky tried not to look too enthused by the idea, though he could feel his stomach jump right up and bringing his heart along with it at the thought, even with what vague memories he had of the place jumbled up in his head. Even if his mind couldn't parse them, even his body and his spirit seemed to know it was something to be excited about.

 

"Does this have anything to do with the fight you and Steve had while I was gone?" Bucky said, and Sam's look soured, confirming his suspicions. "Look, I don't wanna get into—"

 

"Man, come on. We've all pretty much been pardoned since the justice system found Ross to be out of bounds with his whole unlawful incarceration thing, Tony's offering use of his private jet and whatever funding we need to get you into the country undetected since your citizenship's still way up higher in the air than I can fly—it'll be a little work, but it'll be good for you to get home sometime."

 

"I want to," Bucky said honestly. "But I'm not—wait, did St—Tony really say that?"

 

"Yeah, of course," Sam said, looking bewildered even as he did, waving his hand demonstratively. "He's the one who got his team, swarm, fleet, whatever of lawyers to hit Ross where it hurt. I mean, I don't think he's gonna be happy to see you anytime soon, but he did tell Cap to take care of you, make sure he didn't drag you into another war against the government. The law can only do so much."

 

He sighed, brows knitting just enough to wrinkle the smooth skin of his brow. "And I... I don't think he forgives you, if he ever will, but he's a good person. He helps people who need help. And he's ready and willing to offer whatever it is for you to be safe."

 

He got up and clapped Bucky on the shoulder. "We should go," Sam said, a little hesitantly, though his grip held more certainty than his tone. "It's not a solution, but... maybe it'll be good for you." A squeeze, short but meaningful. "And it'll give me a chance to catch up with my grandparents." A wry, encouraging smile.

 

Bucky leaned into the touch, absentmindedly looking down at Sam's hand before speaking up again.

 

"Only if you tell me what the fight with Steve was all about," Bucky said finally. Sam frowned (more a pout, though Bucky wouldn't say that aloud) but he caved rather quicker than Bucky had anticipated.

 

"We were talking about—well, I was talking about ways to get you integrated back into society. I figured, hey, you're a war veteran, give or take a couple of decades. And you're strong. If there's anybody who could get back into the game, it's you. But Steve, he kept saying you shouldn't be going out so soon, like you hadn't just spent a couple of months under. I know you ain't fragile, and I know that if it took us literal years to find you even when you were half outta your mind with HYDRA warring with who you were on the inside, well, you can probably take care of yourself in the city. But with what happened before, well—he doesn't think it'd be a good idea."

 

Bucky clenched his fist—the one that was gone, a phantom limb reacting invisible to all but him—as he said "After all this, he thinks I still need protection."

 

"I think it's the 'after all this' that got him worried," Sam sighed. "He cares about you, I knew that going in, but what was staying a popsicle gonna help? You weren't moving forward, you were literally just frozen in place—never a good thing for any soldier, let alone any human being. I know it was your decision to go under, but it was a stupid-ass decision and Steve was an idiot for going along with it. T'challa was the one who brought up treatment, and Steve almost refused, said he wanted to respect your choice. But then T'challa pulled the 'I am king and you're in my country and this impacts all of us, it's not a request' card and Steve had to agree. Seemed pretty relieved we twisted his arm about it, when it started working."

 

"So," Bucky said, his tone affecting wryness to hide his irritation, "doesn't that mean my decision to go under _was_ a good idea? Seeing as it's worked so well."

 

"Man, you didn't even bother to ask for treatment. T'challa was the one who did all the work. Tell me you weren't entirely willing to sleep like some goddamn fairytale princess for the next century just because you thought you weren't safe to be around people," Sam said, sharp like a staccato drumbeat, but not meant to be cruel, cutting through Bucky's irritation like a polished knife.

 

The silence that followed was a heavy one, like the rhythmic anticipation leading up to the first note in a song.

 

"How is it moving forward if I'm going back?" Bucky eventually asked, and Sam relaxed his tense soldier's posture to something more welcoming, more than he'd ever seen before, even when he'd been sitting with Sam swapping jibes and jokes and ribbing each other like friends. Because even then he'd known in the way Sam's shoulders set that he didn't _trust him,_ still remembered the feel of being thrown across the room by his jaw.

 

But Sam—Sam trusted him now. More so than before, at least. And damn if Bucky was going to waste that.

 

"Gotta get back in the game somewhere. I was thinking somewhere close to home would be a good start," Sam answered, and Bucky nodded.

 

"Steve's gonna be so mad," Sam added, and Bucky could only agree.

* * *

 

 

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* * *

 

 

"Moving forward" apparently involved shaving and cutting his hair in the mirror with precise passes of a straight razor. He looked much like the Bucky Barnes of the forties, in all but the eyes. War had certainly taken away some of the Bucky that swung the night away in the best of New York's dance halls, but there was an emptiness that could not be matched in the eyes of the soldier—the soldier who he no longer was, though the remnants of that life were permanently etched into his features, in the dryness of his skin from the moisture sapped from it in cryo, or in the wrinkles born of pain of all sorts.

 

Still, for all that he'd lost, his ability to draw a few low whistles when he walked into a room pressed and dressed was not one of them.

 

"Shoot, Barnes, you clean up good," Clint remarked. Wanda smiled, still tired as she'd long been since they were freed from the Raft, but gamely enough to give him an appreciative once-over. Scott looked a bit gobsmacked when he looked up from a tablet over one of his usual overseas calls with his family, not that that wasn't his general state when it came to the rest of the Avengers, and his situation at large.

 

"Makeover, huh? Gotta tell ya, vast improvement over vaguely attractive hobo," he said, giving a thumbs-up and a grin, both a little strained but wholly genuine.

 

"Yeah, 'suspicious hitchhiker in a horror movie' wasn't really doing it for you."

 

Bucky heard Sam's steps before he spoke up, but still felt anxiety roiling in his stomach before he faced the man and his gorgeous smile, approval he didn't know he needed rolling off it with ease.

 

He didn't miss the way Sam's gaze lingered on the newly-smooth angle of his jaw, up to the swoop of his hair and locking on his eyes for a moment.

 

Bucky could almost hear the crooning trumpet of a none-too-innocent love song that played smaller clubs, quieter ones meant for drinking and talking and charming, slow-dancing with a partner with whom the night wouldn't end.

 

"Do I look good?" Bucky couldn't help asking, phrasing it casually, the tone far from what he'd wanted to ask though the words were just the same.

 

"Good, yeah. Yeah, you look fine," Sam answered, steady gaze never wavering despite the lightness of the words, and he reached out and plucked the top button of his dress shirt open, just enough to keep it from looking overly stiff and formal. It felt natural, more like it was supposed to, that way, and from the angle they stood, nobody could see the way Sam's knuckles brushed his collar as he pulled back.

 

"There. Now you look a little more like yourself," he said.

 

"And how do you know how that looks, Wilson?" Bucky teased, even if, the truth was, he wasn't entirely sure of the answer himself.

 

Sam shrugged. "Not like Steve, anyway. He always looks like one of those kindergarten school teachers with pants pulled up and shirt buttoned all the way."

 

"Maybe looking like a schoolteacher will keep eyes off me," Bucky suggested, amused. The arm T'challa didn't have the range that his old arm used to, but it worked well enough to respond to the way he tensed and locked his shoulder, moving forward when he wanted to reach out to touch Sam's elbow. "Farthest thing from, what was it? Suspicious hitchhiker in a horror movie?"

 

Sam laughed, shaking his head and laying a hand on Bucky's new arm.

 

"Not according to horror movies. Come on, before you get it in your head to buy awful glasses and carry around a bunch of schoolbooks."

 

"Sounds like you've thought about this a lot, Wilson."

 

"Oh fuck you, Barnes."

 

* * *

 

 

Tony Stark greeted them on the tarmac, standing beside his ostentatious yet practical bullet-proof limo, clasping Sam's arm when he came close and then giving Bucky a brisk nod, which was more than he'd expected, really, after everything.

 

He was a discordant whine, a rambling melody in an otherwise harmonious band, full of energy even in the face of an uncomfortable encounter, and Bucky couldn't help but like him, the way he did those solo players in the dance halls who somehow meshed with the band until they didn't, until they found their own tune for a little bit before going back into the chorus with the rest.

 

He hadn't had the opportunity before, and doubted he ever would, to form an opinion on Stark based on time spent with him rather than secondhand reports or unfeeling observation, but even being in the man's presence made him relax enough, smile enough to stop Sam looking between them like a bomb was about to go off.

 

There was animosity there, certainly, but even when he was holding a grudge Stark was jovial, loquacious, remarking on the sights as they drove into the city, sitting in the back of the ridiculously luxurious limousine behind tinted, reinforced windows.

 

Stark—Tony, he could at least think of him that way after all he'd done for them—was like a particularly bad tour guide, pointing out a hundred different places, half of which didn't seem like anywhere with real value, going on a dozen tangents per minute, enough that Bucky had lost the thread of the conversation somewhere after "welcome back to New York, you could probably travel faster walking right now, but I'd rather keep you off the streets in case Ross is paranoid enough to plant snipers in the hipster owned five floor flats of the district."

 

He was amused, however, by Tony's comments on certain landmarks, old and new, with an air of disgust, citing them as horribly crowded places to go if you wanted to heckle tourists. Bucky made the decision right there and then to drag Sam to every single one, just to watch him squirm.

 

"Sure you don't want to stay at the tower, Sam? We've got a place set up for you and Sleeping Beauty over here, and it'll be easier to get around if you've got Happy to take you wherever," Tony said. He didn't look at Sam, or at Bucky for that matter, when he said it, but his tone was earnest in a way that might have been just a little heartbreaking.

 

"I really appreciate everything you're doing, Tony," Sam said, smiling at him anyway. Who knew what Tony was looking at behind those shades, anyway? "I _want_ to stay home with family, and show the old man over here what he's missed the past seventy years. And we can come over for dinner, if you're not busy saving the world one way or another."

 

Tony's shoulders shook in a slight chuckle, and he clapped Sam's shoulder, agreeing with the idea and arguing schedules like they were the ones traveling together, while Bucky looked up at the tall buildings and watched brightly lit shops flash in his vision as they drove. Soon enough, the buildings turned to familiar brick, lower but still high enough to pack people into, going from loud, fast-paced metropolis to something more familiar, more at home, even if never really slowing down in its rhythm.

 

"Welcome to Harlem," Tony said quietly, and Bucky turned to him, surprised at being addressed. "Were you ever here before—"

 

"You should hear the stories," Sam said, smirking.

 

"Oh, there will definitely be stories. You guys will tell me all the stories. When you visit Saturday."

 

"Friday," Sam responded immediately, the previous argument threatening to start right up again.

 

"I used to go to that club," Bucky said suddenly, cutting into whatever was about to ensue. Tony called for Happy to slow down, just a bit, and they passed a building that now looked to be a flat with a fashionable little deli at the bottom.

 

"What club?"

 

"Must'a been taken down years ago," Bucky said. "It was called the Hollywood House. Had paintings of shows on the walls, servers dressed up as whoever was big in the pictures at the time. Wasn't a big place, but it let in anybody, and the owner was this gangster... paid bulls to stay out. They didn't serve too much alcohol but they did get in a lot of money letting in anybody, white or coloured, and not segregating the dance floors. Lotsa pansies—ah, gay people too, they couldn't be arrested where the cops weren't allowed in, so everybody was safe there."

 

"Maybe you should be the tour guide here," Tony said dryly. "Maybe that'll be your new job. Getting to tell people about the good ol' days in thirties New York."

 

"These days are better," Bucky said absently, watching a couple kiss at one of the outside tables, hands intertwined in a way that he never would have seen two women, especially one being white and one looking mixed, do in his time.

 

* * *

 

 

Tony won the argument about Saturday, with the condition that Sam got to invite his grandparents, and whatever family he could scrounge up in the time they'd be staying, to Stark Tower (formerly Avengers Tower formerly Stark Tower, again, because having a tower named after a broken team didn't sit well with the public, apparently). Tony seemed both ecstatic and scared out of his mind at the prospect of the entire Wilson clan in his home, but Bucky figured, after what he'd heard from Sam and the incident with Ultron, that he'd like the company.

 

When they arrived at the Wilson home, a lovely and relatively spacious three-floor house, they were greeted by a small woman and a larger man, though neither tall enough to reach Bucky's shoulders. They welcomed him with joviality and the grace of a couple unused to but eager to have guests, and if Bucky hadn't been so observant he wouldn't have seen the way they stared at him and muttered to each other as the two younger men were led into the living room.

 

"I told you about him, Maw-me," Sam said, voice brimming with affection that had yet to putter out. "Cap's ol' pal James. You know. Bucky Barnes?"

 

"No, I know, hon," Sam's grandmother (call me Purnella, dear) said, hands flying to her waist as she stared them both down. "But I could swear... now I could swear..." She gave Bucky a considering look he couldn't very well decipher, for all his training, but it might have been something like recognition. It tap-tapped on the back of his head, like he was missing something, like trying to count a beat that was a little harder to follow.

 

"Charlie," Sam's grandfather William said suddenly, and things seemed to snap into place, the song finding its rhythm once more.

 

"Pop," Sam warned.

 

"No, shush now. James—or do you prefer Bucky—either one, do you dance?" Purnella cut in.

 

Bucky brightened at the question, smiling cautiously. "Yes, ma'am."

 

"Don't ma'am me, come on now. I'm no older than you," Purnella laughed. "Come on now. I'm tryn'a test a theory here. Show me some of your moves."

 

"Maw, we don't have the space," Sam warned, but Bucky had already moved over to stand beside Sam's grandmother, startling her just the littlest bit before she laughed and put her arm around his back, his new one around her shoulder as they began a sedate little jockey Charleston, and Purnella laughed delightedly while William clapped a rhythm and stomped one foot from where he sat on the plush armchair.

 

"You lost the coif," she said. Sam looked on, confused, as Bucky brightened even further. He knew being here would be good for him, but he didn't think it'd be such a quick fix to have the man smiling so much and so wide before they'd even gone out for their first tour of the best of the city that Sam remembered.

 

"Ain't the fashion no more," Bucky said, his Brooklyn accent heavy and comfortable, like he'd only just slipped out of a stiff suit he'd been wearing for too long.

 

"That's nonsense, it'd be—what do the kids call it these days, vintage? You could make it work. Consider that," Purnella insisted, patting his arm. Her hand was softer than anything Bucky had felt in a while, made so by old age, and though he didn't recognize her in any way, the little drawl in her voice was familiar in ways Bucky didn't realize he'd missed.

 

"Okay, I'm confused," Sam said, raising his hands in surrender.

 

"I remember, I was... maybe fifteen? Me'n your Pop were sneaking into those dance halls down on Swing Street to have a bit of fun where we weren't allowed. I remember on a couple'a those nights, there was this white boy swingin' girls round like nobody's business, he was a regular, the bar man called him the Charlie with the coif. Lotsa white folk came visiting on Swing Street with all the rest, people used to call it Jungle Alley with all the mixing, but there was more _trust_ with the ones the barkeep already knew. Things could get bad if you didn't keep trouble reined in, and trouble usually came with the visitors. But this boy here? A regular. Said that Mama Ellie liked him, that he didn't cause no trouble so they didn't mind letting him around. All those news reels didn't say nothin' bout Cap's boy trawling Harlem's dance halls but seems like he and our Charlie were one in the same," Purnella explained.

 

"It's no wonder you wanted to come back here, 'stead of old haunts like Brooklyn," William piped up thoughtfully. "Even for people who never did live here, coming back to Harlem is like coming back home."

 

Bucky nodded, the smile never leaving his face.

 

* * *

 

 

Tony had a new arm delivered to him the next day. Said T'challa's people probably had some amazing stuff, but that he should give it a try anyway.

 

It worked like a dream. Tony seemed reluctant to speak to him directly, even if over video call, but accepted the choked "thank you" Bucky gave even as he rattled off instructions on how to get it on.

 

He thought that, in Tony's own special way, this was an apology.

 

Bucky wished he could say the same, but an arm could be fixed. He would never apologize, because there was no fixing what he'd—what HYDRA had done, _with_ him.

 

So same as Tony Stark, Bucky instead looked to the future. But he didn't forget.

 

He couldn't. He clenched his new fist easily, and all he could hear was gunfire. Shells breaking on the battlefield or the ringing single shot in a quiet room, it didn't matter. He could hear it all, too loud to hear the music anymore.

 

Only when Sam came in—taking one look at his arrhythmic flexing and then kneeling before his stooped form, slipping his own solid hand between the new fingers and gripping loosely—did the worst of it quiet down, and he could hear Mama Ellie's voice like a distant echo riding on the wind, soothing him back into certainty.

 

* * *

 

 

They wandered tourist spots like idiots, dressed in the most obnoxious clothes they could find, up to and including a little umbrella hat Sam had dug out from the back of his closet. Bucky took on a style that Sam described as "pretentious hipster", while he himself proclaimed his outfit 'a cross between Urkel and a middle aged white couple from Georgia visiting Disneyland'.

 

They broke out laughing from every dirty look they got (though at some point Bucky actually did fit into the crowd, Brooklyn being full up now of pretentious hipsters in plaid and tight pants, as Sam put it), getting an unironic kick out of their own ironic display, visiting places that to Bucky, and sometimes even to Sam, were familiar yet entirely new.

 

It was a comfortable sort of tired that had them sitting at a restaurant on the docks, looking out on the water. The view from where they sat sparked some recognition, and Bucky mentioned to Sam how, if they discounted the sleekness of the white boats on the water, it'd look near the same as when he used to work there, helping offload cargo from as young as fifteen.

 

The biggest surprise Bucky got that day was when, upon recognizing a street a little ways away from the docks, he found the familiar below-ground hall that used to be one of his favored establishments, still taking in business, now as a more sedate bar that preserved a lot of the old design. Sam pointed out the plaque that proclaimed the place a historical landmark, and Bucky delighted in pointing out what he could remember, Sam nodding along, giving him a soft smile he knew meant something a lot more than appreciation for the brickwork.

 

The music played, liveliest and loudest here, in the sedate, cafe quiet of the afternoon, the jazz that rolled with him through the worst of his days in the war, heavy and heady and joyful even when Bucky himself was not.

 

* * *

 

 

"I've figured out what we're doing today," Sam proclaimed when he came down for breakfast, while William sat bemused at Bucky's wide eyes.

 

"You're really puttin' poor ol' Bucky through his paces, ain'tcha, kid?" William remarked, and Sam clapped Bucky on the back good-naturedly as he responded, "Hey, guy's a supersoldier. Having fun isn't gonna be the thing that kills him."

 

"And what _fun_ did you cook up today? Harassing more locals with your tourist act?" William accused, though the laugh lines crinkled around his eyes, and Sam didn't take offense, instead pointing his own accusing finger at his grandfather.

 

"Hey, you laughed just as hard as Maw-me did when we showed you the selfies," Sam said seriously, and they stared each other down with the same intimidating look involving raised eyebrows and squinting eyes, before Bucky broke the silence by clearing his throat.

 

"What, ah—what's the plan today?" he asked, and Sam broke the contest to beam at him. William looked between them with the same raised eyebrows, though his expression was now more thoughtful, as though he was parsing a mystery that was near solving.

 

"I found a dance studio that specializes in jazz and swing dancing a little ways from Central Park. Called ahead, told them we might drop by. Thought you might enjoy it, I mean, if you had somebody to dance with," Sam said, shrugging.

 

"And maybe you could learn a few things yourself, eh kid?" William teased, and Sam flapped a hand at him, the sniping affectionate enough not to put Bucky on edge. There was no judgment in his tone or eyes when he looked over to Bucky over the thin rim of his glasses, trying to convey something Bucky wasn't entirely willing to parse just yet.

 

"We'll see what this guy's got first," Sam retorted, and William snorted in turn.

 

"He's certainly got something," William muttered, at a level only Bucky could hear.

 

* * *

 

 

When Sam suggested they spend the next morning jogging in Central Park, Bucky briefly flashed back to the time he'd spent in Europe. Sam had jogged every day then too, a routine Bucky thought might have been his way of equalizing when his world was set off-kilter, something mundane in the midst of superheroes and the thorough destruction of a major shadow agency, not to mention the hunt for a murderous assassin gone rogue.

 

Bucky agreed to the jogging. It'd be a nice way to clear his head, and it'd be a change of pace to the amusing, but no less exhausting crusade to visit New York's tourist hotspots. He hadn't realized it until that day, but they'd been so aggressive in their attempts to be _okay_ and to be _normal_ to the point of ridiculousness that they hadn't taken the time to rest. And a distraction was just that—a distraction. Fleeting at best. It certainly wasn't the same as remaining in a frozen coffin, but it wasn't quite the forward motion he knew Sam had been pushing for when he won Bucky's 'freedom' from Steve's over-protectiveness.

 

They arrived at the dance studio in the Upper East Side, a little higher brow than Bucky had anticipated. He knew if his clothes were less than new (which, courtesy of Tony Stark and claims that everything that went wrong with Bucky could have been avoided if he'd just gotten a haircut and dressed better, was paid for on the SI dollar after Bucky and Sam put in orders), they'd be getting dirty looks from the passers-by hurrying along streets shadowed by the most luxury flats Bucky had ever laid eyes on (as himself, at least, whereas the soldier had no care for what luxury meant beyond the irony of large windows and higher security).

 

Sam made introductions and about how he'd called ahead while Bucky surveyed the high ceilings and wide space of the polished clean dance floor. There was a small woman in the corner teaching young girls how to turn their feet out in shaky ballet stances, and Bucky was distracted long enough not to notice the thin, tall woman with short, tight dreads until she was holding her hand out for him to shake.

 

"Hi there, I'm Yashonne, I'm one of the jazz instructors here. You must be James?" she said, and Bucky smiled, putting on all the charm while subtly glancing over to Sam, who was chatting up the clerk at the desk.

 

"It's a pleasure," he said, convincingly present, though Yashonne looked like she noticed his distraction, smirking a little, eyes still kind.

 

Sam had apparently introduced him as a vet back from war (true) and a Brooklyn boy who hadn't been back in a while (also true, and much conversation was had about Williamsburg and its hipster population, with their appreciation for the old keeping the tenements, though long since rebuilt and renovated, in good shape), and a lover of Harlem dances circa 1930, something he hadn't had the opportunity to practice in a while.

 

Yashonne seemed delighted by this, and soon she and Bucky were plotting, heads tucked together and feet tapping to a beat Sam couldn't hear. Yashonne was showing him something on her phone, some kind of video that Bucky nodded his head to. They were very nearly on the same wavelength, and if it wasn't for the little grins Bucky flashed at him before going back to the conversation, Sam might have been jealous.

 

The first time Bucky lifted Yashonne and then swung her down with such force that Sam choked on his drink, the kids practicing a bit of ballet on the sidelines stopped and stared, clapping and oohing as Bucky swung her between his wide legs and then pulled her back up with ease, and she just went with it like she was used to the movement, the two of them jumping right and left before Bucky swung her over his shoulder and around his torso like she was a hula-hoop and not a human being.

 

The kids gathered along the side of the dance floor to watch the spectacle as one of the other instructors got the speakers hooked up to his phone, the most upbeat song Sam had ever heard blaring through the studio's sound system.

 

The little girls in the group seemed ecstatic, mouthing or singing along (over the speakers, Sam couldn't tell) and watching in rapt attention as Bucky and Yashonne danced a jive that just wouldn't quit to Taylor Swift's Shake It Off.

 

After some deliberation (not too much, honestly, he'd already whipped his phone out, hemming and hawing for all of five seconds before making a decision), Sam had brought his camera up to record the whole routine for the team. If he could upload it on youtube, which was out of the question for obvious reasons, it'd be entitled "100 year old and 20 something jive to Taylor Swift", or something along those lines.

 

Later on, when the show was done and the music stopped, Sam found he could barely get five feet into Bucky's space with all the kids vying for his attention. Not that he cared, really. It was a miracle to see Bucky so happy, the kind of exhaustion brought about by doing something you really, truly loved.

 

Sam was pulled out of his reverie by Yashonne sidling up to him, whistling lowly as she wiped the sweat from her face and neck. "I have no idea how you scored that, hon, but you have _got_ to tell me your secret."

 

"Haha, we're not... not together," Sam said, shrugging lightly. Yashonne stared at him with more incredulity than Sam thought was necessary.

 

"Oh honey, if I thought I had a chance I'd snatch him up right now. What the _hell_ are you waiting for? He's obviously gone for you. Did the whole thing just to impress you."

 

"Really?" Sam said, his own incredulity seeping into his tone.

 

"I mean, probably," Yashonne shrugged. "But if this is your way of, what, wooing him or something, you're at least doing a good job. Dancin's in his blood, you can tell. But I'm sure he'd enjoy it way more with the right partner."

 

Bucky, unaware of what was being said over the shrill cries of the kids, took that moment to smile warm and wide at Sam from across the room, and Yashonne only smirked at Sam in response.

 

"What'd I tell you? Gone."

 

To be fair to Sam, all of Yashonne's talk about the right partner had gotten into his head, and agreeing to dance with Bucky had seemed a good idea at the time.

 

He didn't think so after the first time Bucky literally threw him up in the air screaming, saying that he could probably handle flying without his wings, but Bucky's side-splitting laughter made the whole ordeal almost worth it.

 

* * *

 

 

One of Sam's favorite photos from their escapades as the worst kind of fake tourists imaginable was from when Bucky flipped double peace signs while posing with a street-side Elmo mascot near Times Square.

 

They were meeting Tony in the tower in Manhattan and had decided taking the scenic route would be ideal, though when some of the police started giving them the stink-eye for hanging around too long, it didn't take them long to find themselves in the silent, fast-moving elevator riding up the side of Stark-formerly-Avengers-formerly-Stark tower.

 

Tony had offered to have Sam's grandparents picked up earlier on, and Sam couldn't refuse the offer of convenience. He privately thought they'd be entertained by the absurd luxury of a limo ride in New York, and had given Tony his blessing to charm the socks off them both. Even with the lingering cautiousness that pervaded the air between them, Sam still trusted Tony as the good man he was, trusted him to keep his family safe.

 

Running with Bucky was a whole other experience, where half the time Sam was worried Bucky was only hamming up his enjoyment to make Sam think he was peachy-keen post-thaw, and the rest of the time he found himself wondering at how much Bucky seemed to genuinely enjoy making an ass out of himself.

 

Sam would take it to his grave, but even now, having fought with him, having found some weird balance between friendship and sublimated attraction that seemed entirely mutual (if he wasn't rusty on the dating front after a couple of years overseas), Sam could still remember their heart-stopping first meeting, where a man who was more weapon than human literally ripped the wheel out of a car in the middle of a full tilt chase with an arm that could just as easily have ripped Sam's neck from his shoulders.

 

Still, in-between the maddest moments of their mad crusade to seem as okay as they weren't, there was a quiet serenity in Bucky that Sam had never seen in anybody else. He'd close his eyes, smile as though cool air was hitting him from all the way off the shore, and even over the cacophony of city life Sam could almost hear him humming, like some song that had started back up long after the cold silences of kill missions and frozen sleep. He'd walk with an off beat every third step, like the most basic steps of a dance, like walking had never been as natural as dancing. With the way he'd been in the studio, with the pretty Yashonne and the kids who flocked to him like ducklings, Sam didn't think that was too far off.

 

At one time when they were standing on the corner taking a bit of a breather, Sam snapped a photo of Bucky with his head tilted up, long throat exposed as he smiled a small, contented smile, eyes closed as he seemed to take in the rhythm of the streets, one foot tapping imperceptibly on the pavement.

 

Hobo photo op Elmo might have won the day, but that particular candid shot was, for Sam, a close second.

 

"Do you think he'll ever forgive me?" Bucky asked quietly, and Sam was broken out of his reverie of earlier that day, transported back into the elevator that was slowing down as it reached the top floor Sam had become familiar with, even when it hadn't been his home as much as it had been Steve's.

 

"I don't think it's up to anybody to decide that but him," Sam said, sighing. It was such a childlike thing to ask that he was winded by the question, suspected Bucky hadn't meant to voice the thought at all.

 

"I wouldn't forgive me," said Bucky, even quieter, though the elevator stopping at the top floor allowed Sam the silence to hear it.

 

"Again," Sam said, "that's up to nobody but you to decide. All I can say is that life's too short to not learn how to forgive yourself, even if others don't forgive you."

 

Bucky snorted. "I'm about a hundred years old now. Life isn't exactly scrimping on the years for me."

 

"Well I wouldn't call what you had before life," Sam said seriously, clasping Bucky's arm as they lingered at the elevator's open doors. "What you got now? That's what you've gotta cash in on. Don't waste the minutes. Not even on Tony Stark."

 

Bucky didn't smile at the notion, but the steps he took out the elevator (one two-one one two-one) told Sam enough to smile when Tony greeted them at the double doors to the dining room.

 

* * *

 

 

"I don't forgive you."

 

Bucky stood at the glass window looking out onto the New York skyline, larger than life and full and so much bigger than he ever thought possible, so much bigger than he remembered it being. He'd only ever seen it once, when he'd helped Steve huff and puff all the way up one of the taller buildings in Manhattan. It was an anthill compared to the tower now, but at the time, the height had taken even Bucky's breath away.

 

"I wouldn't forgive me either," Bucky said hollowly.

 

"No, you don't—" Tony stopped midway, sighing audibly. From the corner of his eye Bucky could see him rubbing his eyes, a gesture that spoke of the kind of pain you couldn't heal with modern medicine.

 

"Barnes, I don't think you're a bad guy. If I did, you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be around at all," Tony said, shaking his head. "Let me try again. You know the merchant of death?"

 

It was a familiar sort of name, but Bucky couldn't yet place it, the knowledge in the dark, discordant corners of his mind he didn't want to reach for.

 

"Me. That was what they used to call me. And I loved it. I figure even with your kill count I might have killed more people—indirectly, sure, but it's the death toll that counts, right?—than you ever did. And I may not have seen every face or knew every name, but I killed. I killed so many people. And the ones I didn't, you can bet your ass I made them suffer. God, Wanda—you remember Wanda? Our resident witchy witch? My weapons orphaned her and caused her more grief and devastation than anything in her life ever did. Even the experiments that made her what she is now apparently don't hold a candle to one working Starktech warhead. Wait," Tony said, holding up a finger when Bucky opened his mouth to speak. "I'm not finished. Let me finish, ice pop."

 

Bucky's mouth twitched at the name, but he nodded once, a gesture for Tony to go on.

 

"There might be hundreds of people in the world right now who will never ever forgive me, and I don't blame them. It doesn't matter how many lives I save, whether I save the world—I mean, believe it or not, you helped me really pin down my understanding of that. People not forgiving me. People hating me, no matter how hard I try to make up for what I did. You made me _understand."_

 

Tony faced him, and Bucky turned, meeting his eyes. "I may not be a psychic, and as much as I try to plan for the future, I can't predict it. But from where I'm standing right now? I can't imagine myself _ever_ forgiving you for what you did to my mother. My dad—I loved my dad, don't get me wrong. He was an ass at the best of times but I wouldn't have tried so hard to impress him if I didn't love him. Still, him getting offed? It wasn't exactly unexpected. He had his fingers so deep in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s pies that they might as well have called him Jack fucking Horner, fucker had a big red target painted on his head from the get-go. I would've grieved him, but I wouldn't have been surprised. But my mother? My mother was innocent. She was good. She was never involved in anything, and you—"

 

Tony's eyes were so wide and strained Bucky could see the veins creeping farther into them, but he didn't look away. Tony hissed, catching his breath before continuing.

 

"HYDRA," he said in a huff. "HYDRA sent you to kill my father, and you killed my mother along with him. You made her suffer through seeing him die, choked her slowly. And if anybody ever told me to forgive you for that, I'd repulsor them in the face."

 

Bucky swallowed near audibly in the silence that followed, where Tony shut his eyes tight and looked over the skyline, avoiding his gaze.

 

"But," he said after a while. "But that doesn't mean you can't do good. We're too fucking similar, I guess. We've both got blood on our hands. We've both got a lot to make up for. If I didn't think you deserved the chance to do that, then I'd retire Iron Man right here and now. You're a good guy, Barnes. At least I think you were trying to be before the world and fuck all screwed it up for you. I don't think I'll ever forgive you, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't fight every day to make up for every one that HYDRA took from you."

 

Tony Stark, Bucky thought, was a symphony of beautiful, powerful, discordant notes, flaring in angry trumpets and seemingly thoughtless drumbeats that came together to make music, the kind that you could feel in your bones.

 

"Thank you," he said eventually, and Tony snarled a little bit. "Don't," he said, but not cruelly. "Don't thank me for what I'm not giving you. Just... just don't."

 

Later, after a long silence in which they just stood there, tracing the skyline, standing closer than they'd been before, Tony invited Bucky to try some of his drinks—all charm and easy banter, as though the last conversation hadn't happened.

 

Even if Tony said there was no forgiveness in him for Bucky, the way they clasped hands in a brief but firm shake before Tony poured him some of his good drinks felt close enough to comfort him.

 

* * *

 

 

Once, when Bucky had been dancing to one of the best string sets he'd ever heard in his life, he heard a snap like a muffled gunshot and lost his footing so badly that he fell on top of his dance partner and sprained her ankle.

 

He had apologized over and over, picking her up and carrying her to a chair, patting her down to make sure he hadn't bruised her anywhere else.

 

He later found out one of the strings had snapped from the pressure of strumming too fast and too hard (the _best strings Bucky had heard in his whole life_ ) and the standing cello player had to wrap his hand from the cut he got. He didn't know how much it took to replace a string for an instrument that big, but every night after, with the player absent from the set, seemed lacking and empty. Bucky had missed the sound for all of the five days it'd been gone, and was happy to hear it again when the man returned, his injury apparently having been healed enough for him to start playing again.

 

This moment, standing over a man who was groaning in pain, holding his broken hand close to his chest—it felt just like those few seconds after the string had snapped, confusion and shock mixed with the sinking feeling he'd just done something terrible.

 

Though he supposed this was much, much worse than accidentally tripping and falling on a girl a couple inches shorter than him, for all that he didn't regret it.

 

"Buck, we gotta go. _Now,_ " Sam prompted as he came back to awareness, people beginning to gawk and gather into a crowd. Bucky's instincts took over before his brain could catch up, and he dragged Sam's hood over his head and grabbed his arm, breaking into a sprint into the nearest alleyway.

 

"Fuck," Sam gasped as soon as they stopped, stumbling hard, the only thing keeping him from face-planting in the concrete Bucky's other arm, the one Tony had given him (and Tony was going to be _so mad,_ they'd been seen, they'd been spotted, people had cameras in everything now, it's probably already on twitter), catching him by the chest and pushing him back upright.

 

"Fuck, fuck, this is... shit, fuck, people saw that, somebody was recording and people saw—fuck," Sam said, wiping his face. Bucky said nothing, his hands clenching and unclenching as Sam leaned against the concrete wall, his palms still pressed to his eyes.

 

"Fuck!" he yelled, longer and louder than before, one hand thrown out to punch the wall behind him, hard, with the meat of his fist.

 

When Bucky found his voice, the first thing out of his mouth, weak and impotent, was "I'm sorry."

 

Sam laughed, and it was not a nice sound, harsh and hollow. It made Bucky flinch, though Sam was too busy pressing fists to his eyes to see it.

 

"Wasn't your fault," Sam said through gritted teeth. "Shit like that... NYPD's really living up to their reputation, there."

 

"You didn't do nothin' wrong," Bucky said angrily. "He just... what _he_ did was wrong, but nobody even bothered to help you, and when I saw you being shoved over the hood of the car, I just couldn't think—"

 

"Buck, just shut up," Sam said sharply, and Bucky did, eyes flashing with hurt before that too disappeared behind a well-practiced mask of impassiveness. Sam sighed, gesturing for Bucky to come closer. Cautiously, Bucky did. The two of them sat on the dirty concrete, against the dusty wall, hidden by the shadow of the building.

 

Sam reached out and slipped his fingers into Bucky's hand, gripping tight. He looked down at their joined fingers and sighed.

 

"Thanks, huh? Thanks for sticking up for me," Sam said, the gentleness back in his voice.

 

"Fucker deserved what he got," Bucky sighed, resting his head on Sam's shoulder.

 

"Shoulda seen his face when you squeezed," Sam said, chuckling. He stopped, sighing again, something tired and resigned that made Bucky look up to meet his eyes.

 

"You shouldn't have done that. I saw you go Winter Soldier mode on their asses, don't think I didn't. I mean, honestly? I'm pretty damn pleased to see him get some back for fucking with a brother, I'm sure I'm not the first one he's stopped for a coupl'a laughs, sadistic fucker. Maybe this'll teach him a damn lesson for once. But we need to keep you safe and under the radar, and I don't want you throwing yourself under the bus and out into the public eye for my sake."

 

"Too late for that," Bucky quipped but sighed his assent when Sam squeezed his hand warningly. "I promise," he said, and Sam relaxed.

 

After about twenty minutes sitting in the dirty alleyway, they deemed it safe to venture out again. Sam checked twitter and, sure enough, a phone cam captured the whole incident, though he personally thought their faces weren't clear enough to suspect and Bucky (maybe out of instinct) kept his face angled away enough from the camera that nobody could say for sure who he was.

 

* * *

 

 

"It shoulda been better by now," Bucky said later, when they were freshly showered and settling in to sleep. "What?" Sam called from the bathroom, leaned over the sink and brushing his pearly whites.

 

Bucky waited for Sam to come back into the room before pulling him down to sit on the bed, Bucky examining the bruising Sam got on his wrists from the rough handling of the policeman who'd grabbed him earlier in the day.

 

"I said it's been years, and with all the civil rights and the equality everybody's been pushing for, it shoulda been better by now. This shouldn't have happened," Bucky said, raising Sam's wrist to eye level.

 

"It _is_ better," Sam said, pulling gently out of Bucky's grip. "Much better than it used to be, 'specially if we're talking about your time. It just... it's not perfect, and people are people. We'll always have bad ones, absolutely shitty ones, and we're just unlucky enough to see them in places like the police force."

 

"It shouldn't still be like it was back then," Bucky muttered. "Where a white guy can point fingers and fuckin' clock a black man for walking down the street 'cause he don't like his face."

 

Sam chuckled. "Well when you say it that way, things haven't changed at all."

 

He shook his head, reaching out to rub the back of Bucky's neck.

 

"Like I said, things are better. That doesn't mean it's all good, but it's better than it was. You gotta learn to take the victories you can. And there've been a blessed number of them since your 'back then'."

 

Bucky remembered names, from his time as the Soldier. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X. The coloured bands that took the fifties and sixties by storm, even with the British Invasion pushing in, keeping the airwaves American. Sam had once laughingly put Earth, Wind and Fire on, telling Bucky to dance to that, to which Bucky responded "I ain't your dancin' monkey, Wilson."

 

He did anyway. He didn't believe there was a human being alive who hadn't danced to Earth, Wind and Fire even once, they were just that good.

 

"Saw some white guy bleedin' someone at the mixed club I liked, once," Bucky sighed. "He weren't even mob or anything, he just... he was just some white guy with too much of the south in him. He'd cornered one of the barmen with a couple'a cronies and started calling him names, tellin' him he had no business dealing drinks to white folk with his dirty hands, and Romy—that was the kid's name, he was a good guy, mixed Filipino and black New Yorker—he was terrified. And I couldn't do anything. I was frozen, didn't know if I should defend him or if I should keep walking. It's what I always used to do before, when I saw shit like that going down on the street. That was the way of it. You just kept walking. Everybody did. Well, except Steve," Bucky snorted. "Shit, Steve never did. But at the time, there was just me, Romy and those guys, and I didn't do nothin'. Romy forked his week's wages over and they broke his nose for it, said no one could tell the difference anyway. Had to help him limp back into the club after. Even said _thanks Mister James, sorry Mister James_ like I didn't just stand there and watch him get bled, like I stopped 'em from socking him when I knew it was coming."

 

"That why you defended me?" Sam said. "Because you felt guilty about before?"

 

Bucky laughed, not pleasantly, but not as hollow as he'd intended.

 

"I broke the guy's hand because I was mad, Sam. I wasn't exactly strolling down memory lane, 'specially with how cracked that road is. Somebody hurt you when we were supposed to be having a good time, and I was pissed as all hell."

 

Bucky sighed, waving his hands and clenching them in mounting distress.

 

"I'm not... I'm not trying to absolve myself of guilt over the shit I did and didn't do before. I just remembered, that's all." He slumped back into the pillows, hands folded over his stomach in a parody of a corpse, albeit one that wasn't trying very hard. "I'm just tryn'a be better."

 

"Well," Sam said carefully, laying down on one side, head propped on his hand. "I'm not arrested. Tony's probably made sure any video or source that could possibly identify us was taken down. You saved me the trouble of having to deal with shitty police and broke some racist's hand. From where I'm standing, you're doing pretty alright."

 

Bucky turned his head to face Sam, brow furrowing. "Then why do I feel like I want to throw up?"

 

"Bad Indian food?"

 

"There's no such thing, Wilson. You take that back."

 

"Okay, okay, not the Indian food, then! So- _ree._ "

 

* * *

 

 

He dreamt about Mama Ellie that night. She looked so sad when he told her what happened with Romy. He thought she was disappointed in him, it plagued him for weeks.

 

Later he realized that she wasn't disappointed, not in him. She was just sad. Sad because she couldn't be angry, sad because the club was on thin ice as it was for just existing, and despite one or two mob connections and a very generous old benefactor who used the club to fill his appetite for spritely men a few decades younger than him, any trouble the club would attract would mean the end of it.

 

It was the sadness born of impotence and helplessness, and Bucky hated it more than any other look he'd ever seen on sweet Mama Ellie's face.

 

She'd have been dead by now—she seemed old even when he first met her, in soul if not in body. There was barely any sign of aging in her except the crinkles in her eyes when Bucky shipped off to war, and her voice remained, as always, perfect and beautiful and strong, never faltering once in all the years Bucky had listened to her sing.

 

He didn't even know her real name. He'd never asked. He maybe could have tracked her down, if he really wanted to, find out where she was buried. He didn't. It seemed like an empty gesture, an insult to the woman who saw him off and who kept him alive with the memory of her voice through the hardest nights of war.

 

* * *

 

 

Steve arrived the next day, looking sheepish at Sam's doorstep. William had been the one to answer, leaving Sam and Bucky to take care of breakfast.

 

"You're Captain America," he said dumbly, while Sam and Bucky argue in the kitchen about what to put in the pancakes.

 

"Um, yes?" Steve said, like he wasn't sure if that was the right answer.

 

"What're you doing here?" Sam called from the kitchen. Bucky perked up, frowned, then marched over, startling William by grabbing Steve by the shoulders, turning him right around, and pushing him out the door.

 

"Hey!"

 

"You're not welcome here."

 

"What, I—"

 

"Not until you've gone to Tony."

 

"Buck, will you—"

 

"I _told you_ over the phone, Steve. I'm not letting you use us as an excuse to twiddle your fingers until you talk to Stark, and I'm not budging on that."

 

"Wait, you've talked to him!?" Sam shouted from the kitchen, unwilling to abandon his (allegedly perfectly cooked) eggs for whatever drama was going on in the front hall.

 

"Stevie's a damn coward when it comes to Stark and I've been tryn'a get him to come over for days. Tony deserves a proper apology from you," Bucky said, pointing an accusing finger at Steve, "not the bullshit you pulled with that _sorry, not sorry_ letter and the crap phone."

 

"Okay, I think I've lost the plot," Sam said.

 

"How do you think I feel?" William muttered, trudging back to the dining area. "All this damn drama in my house, it's like I'm back in the sixties with your mother still acting the sulking teenager."

 

"That's how every day with the Avengers was, so don't have any illusions about the supposed maturity of world-saving superheroes," Sam said.

 

* * *

 

 

Bucky, like the nosy little bitch he was, tracked Steve's progress as he made his way to Stark tower, texting the man every fifteen minutes to ask if he were there already. Last he heard, Steve was in the elevator, and after that the texts stopped.

 

“You worried?” Sam asked cautiously.

 

“M'worried about Tony,” Bucky said.

 

“Guy almost killed you,” Sam pointed out.

 

“He's not the first, probably not the last... and he's low on my list of nightmares,” Bucky said. “Steve did a number on him back when we were in Siberia. And we've... talked. I know he ain't forgivin' me, but I don't know where Steve stands. 'specially with how close they were.”

 

“Well whether they hug it out or we get a Steve-shaped hole out the side of the tower, they need this closure more than any of us, after the shit that went down over the Accords,” Sam said.

 

“They've both got their apologies to make,” Bucky said, nodding. “But if there's any two fellas who deserve the peace, it's those two.”

 

* * *

 

 

Steve was like the first time the blues transformed into the jazz that took all of America by storm. He was the kind of music everybody swore wouldn't catch on, but by the year's end, everybody was humming and tapping a jazz tune like they knew it up and down, which most of them did. That was Steve Rogers. He was the full piece, from the sweet crooning trumpet to the piercing wail of a horn that nobody could ignore as it rode in on the swell of drums and a piano tune that just wouldn't quit.

 

He and Tony clashed the way their music crashed through dance halls, a revolution in and of themselves, setting the tune for a new age that would never really die even long after it grew old.

 

It gratified Bucky to see them together, looking for all the world that everything had been set to rights as long as they were standing in each other's space, even if he knew that neither of them had fully forgiven the other quite yet.

 

He left them and their little dance, circling each other like they were angling to fight but neither of them ready or willing to throw down. He left their music to sink into the cautious tones of a piano solo ready to dive back into the dance hall tunes that brought even the most tired of workers back to life at the end of a hard day, a caution between them that was an intimacy Bucky wouldn't intrude on.

 

“Where you been?” Sam asked when he came back.

 

“Listened to some whatchamacallims—hipster guitarists playin' in the park,” Bucky said. It wasn't a lie—Bucky flipped a couple of quarters at a man singing about somebody he suspected had something to do with the web-slinger he and Sam had faced back in Leipzig while he sat there, biding time between Steve's travel to Stark's place and his own personal surveillance project, ensuring Steve wouldn't come to harm while watching after Tony's back as well.

 

“You and your music,” Sam said, grinning in no way close to unkind, much more the warmth and affection Bucky was still surprised even now that Sam thought he deserved. “I got a surprise for you.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Sam said, licking his lips. He was nervous, almost shy, even. “Tonight. On the docks, there's a... well, kinda like those dances you used to like. Like the clubs. Yashonne told me about it, said it'd probably be something you'd get a kick out of.”

 

“Askin' me to step out?” Bucky said wryly.

 

“That's generally what happens when you leave my grandparents' house, sure.”

 

Bucky laughed, shaking his head. “No, I mean—whaddya call 'em these days? Dating. A date. Is that what this is? We stepping out?”

 

Sam fought a losing battle with the flush that darkened his cheeks, cheeks that couldn't help but go bunched and round at the edges of the smile he was trying too hard to repress.

 

“Feel like I gotta carry a dictionary 'round with you when you get like this,” Sam muttered, but he was too busy biting his lip and grinning to put any real heat into it. “But have it your way, old man. I'll ask you properly if that's what you want.”

 

Bucky grinned, gesturing for Sam to continue.

 

“Wanna, hah, step out with a fella like me, sarge?” The last of his words were playful, but Bucky could read the tension in his shoulder as easily as he could any dime store novel.

 

“That's real forward of you, Airman,” Bucky teased, and he stepped into Sam's space, arms circling his waist. “Ain't got nobody home waiting for me, so I think I can spare the time. There's nothing I'd like better,” he said quietly, “than to dance with my best guy down in Harlem.”

 

“Is that what I am? Your best guy?”

 

“S'what I'm hoping,” Bucky said honestly, and Sam leaned in, smiling against his mouth.

 

* * *

 

“Ever heard of Bill Robinson?”

 

“Feel like I know the name but you'll have to jog my memory.”

 

Yashonne grinned, the whole smile centering on her mouth. She didn't smile with her cheeks, not the way some people did, but she bared her pearly whites with eyes wide and alert instead of crinkling, and it made her beautiful and lively in a way that was entirely unique to her.

 

“Greatest tap dancer in the world,” she exclaimed, typing a name up in her tablet's search bar. They'd exchanged numbers the day they danced the day away to the oohs and aahs of wide-eyed kids, and had since met up a few times for overpriced (but delicious, and probably worth it) coffee in Williamsburg. Bucky would help her plan some routines and she'd show him dancers and musicians she liked, reaching back far enough that Bucky suspected she knew exactly what the feel of his arm (a little too hard to simply be muscle and bone), just the slightest bit off-color to anybody who was looking close enough, and the strength of his grip when he lifted her.

 

But this was New York. A man in a red and blue could literally swing past your head with a quip and a wave one second and you could shrug and say you didn't see nuttin' the next, when a bull pulled over in a squad car to ask you where the _dangerous vigilante_ went. There was loyalty on the streets for those who did right, and there was enough talk about how Captain America backed the Soldier's innocence to at least convince good people like Yashonne not to alert people like Ross to his new haircut.

 

This time, Yashonne showed him a man with long limbs swinging like a skeleton's as his feet tapped a rhythm with such impossible speed and precision that he couldn't be mistaken for any other.

 

“Bojangles,” Bucky said, snapping, and Yashonne laughed brightly. “Thought a man with your dancing chops'd know him. Bojangles Robinson, tap dancing legend. Never seen the like of him again. Man broke barriers with his damn toes, got a lot done for all that guys back then called him an Uncle Tom, and whites down south didn't like the idea of uppity black men with more talent in his little toe than they had down to 'em. Full respect.”

 

They watched a few videos, Bucky brightening as he watched the man dance up and down steps with Shirley Temple, the little girl smiling up at him with adoration bright in her eyes.

 

“I always watch him dance when I'm feeling down,” Yashonne said, sighing. “Can't feel bad when you see that smile, or see him fly across a stage without ever really leaving the ground. Watching a man dance like that... Dancing's always been what got me through the day.”

 

“S'like that for me,” Bucky confessed. “With music.”

 

“Yeah?” Yashonne said, pillowing her head on her arms as she listened intently to Bucky's words.

 

“Jazz hall music, back in Harlem. Used to go there all the time. Only place everythin' felt just right, even if things around me weren't. Memorized those tunes, the beat a player would tap out with his feet before he put fingers to keys. The sax, the trumpets. A damn good singer in the spotlight. Got me through... everything. The rough patches, back in the w—back when it was all I could think about.”

 

Yashonne reached over, squeezing his hand.

 

“How's the music now, then?” she asked a little wryly, though her hand was still warm in his palm when he turned it over. Bucky smiled.

 

* * *

 

 

The music was, in its own way, a thing of beauty. A little more modern than Bucky was used to, but a little older than was on the charts, peppered by different eras the way the club-goers were. It was strange, seeing a woman dressed in the tie-dye fashion of the sixties dancing with a man who was going for the fancy duds of a suit all the way back from the roaring twenties. Seeing two women kissing softly in the corner, one small and plump and Asian and the other with stone-dark skin and hair that fluffed out twice bigger than her head—that was something Bucky was only just getting used to seeing, and was happier for it.

 

Sam and Bucky had met and mingled, talked and laughed over the heart-stopping beats of the club, got drinks and danced, not in the way Bucky was used to but flashy enough to turn heads. “We're gonna end up on another youtube video, and I'm still getting texts from Tony about the last one,” Sam chided, but he still kissed Bucky right there in the middle of the floor with nobody giving them the stink-eye so Bucky figured he couldn't be mad as all that.

 

The end of the night found them on the rooftop of the big, blocky cement building, the lights of the city reflecting off the water. _City that never sleeps_ , Bucky mused as he and Sam leaned into each other's space.

 

“Hear that?” he murmured into Sam's ear.

 

“What, the seagulls?” Sam teased, though when they were both quiet, with the muffled music of the club below underlining the soft, crooning music coming from a nearby fire escape, an open window with a speaker singing out an almost familiar tune.

 

“Hmm, this reminds me of something I heard a long time ago,” Bucky said.

 

“Ever listened to Ella Fitzgerald?” Sam wondered.

 

“Might've. I dunno. Something like this.” Bucky closed his eyes. “In the war. All the bombs, all the screams, and I remembered someone singing just like this. Helped me sleep through the nights.”

 

Sam smiled, soft and warm, and Bucky turned to him, putting one hand on Sam's hip and clasping Sam's hand with the other, warm and firm.

 

“Dance with me?”

 

“You better not toss me in the air again,” Sam warned, though he settled into the slow rocking, his eyes closed as he began to hum the tune, seeming to grow louder in Bucky's head as the world began to grow quieter, leaving just the two of them dancing under the moonlight, stars lost to the light of the city that never sleeps.

 

_Have no regret about_

_Forget about_

_The chances you missed_

_In days to come_

_I know there's something_

_Better than this_

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Is Mama Ellie Ella Fitzgerald? Yeah I don't know. I made her up then realized why I named her Ellie and I didn't bother checking dates, since I'm pretty sure she was too young to be the Mama Ellie in Bucky's past. But I kept her anyway. Seemed fitting. Google is your friend for all the fantastic black talents of the 30s, even if not all of them strictly from Harlem. Hope you guys enjoyed! Hit me up on tumblr, @ muchymozzarella


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